How the Use of Race in Clinical Care Can
Contribute to Health Care Disparities
A new KFF
brief examines the use of racial classification in medical
care and teaching and identifies how these practices can contribute to
ongoing racial disparities in health and health care. There are growing
efforts within the medical community to examine and revise the use of
race in medical care and training and to acknowledge the role of racism
in shaping treatment.
The overview summarizes
how the medical and scientific community have used race to explain
differences in health despite there being no biologic basis to race and
how race continues to be used in medical diagnosis and decision-making.
It explores several ways race impacts medical care and teaching:
- Provider Bias and Discrimination. There is substantial
research that provider and health system bias and discrimination are
drivers of disparities, contributing to racial differences in
diagnoses, treatment decisions, and pain management.
- Disease Stereotyping and Nomenclature. Some medical training
approaches and materials misuse race as a surrogate for genetic
ancestry and socioeconomic status and some disease names use racial
and geographic terms that can improperly link them to certain
communities.
- Use of Race in Clinical Algorithms, Tools and
Guidelines.
Although race is not a reliable stand-in for genetic ancestry, some
clinical estimators or algorithms assign differential risks or
treatments to patients based on race, which can lead to misdiagnosis
and inappropriate treatment. Diagnostic and teaching tools may also
lack appropriate representation to allow for accurate diagnosis for
certain groups.
- Race-based Pharmacological Prescribing Guidelines. Race plays a factor in
the dosing and prescribing of certain drugs for patients and the use
of race in the emerging field of personalized medical therapy is
under growing scrutiny given that genetic variation within
racial/ethnic groups can exceed variation across groups.
Read the issue brief, Use of Race in Clinical Diagnosis and Decision Making
within Health Care: Overview and Implications, for a
fuller discussion and visit the Racial
Equity and Health Policy topic page for related content.
|
.png?width=1200&upscale=true&name=Just%20Released%20Header_1%20(1).png)
No comments:
Post a Comment